OU Football 2012 - Sooners Lacking In Talent?

Is this Oklahoma football team lacking in talent up and down the roster? It's an interesting question and one that you don't hear posed very often when it comes to OU football. However, this week alone two very prominent former Sooners have questioned that very fact.

The first to do so was former head coach Barry Switzer who told John Hoover of the Tulsa World the reasons for Oklahoma's early season struggles was simple.

Entitlement isn't the Sooners' problem. Discipline, suspensions and dismissals aren't the problem. Play-calling and schematics aren't the problem (though Switzer has an idea or two about that).

The problem with the Sooners - they narrowly escaped at UTEP, they tripped up repeatedly against Florida A&M, and they couldn't make a key play when they needed one against Kansas State - is simple.

"They just don't have the talent," Switzer said Monday in a phone interview from his Norman home.

"We're not as good as we have been," Switzer said. "We don't have the Tommie Harrises or Gerald McCoys squatting down there in the middle."

"Sometimes you don't want the experienced players coming back every year," Switzer said. "I experienced that, too. Everybody's, 'Well, we got our whole team coming back.' Well, I'm not too damn sure I'd not rather have some damn sophomores. I'd rather have Lee Roy and Dewey and Lucious (Selmon) as sophomores than a bunch of five-year seniors.

"I'd rather have Tommie Harris as a freshman than a bunch of fifth-year seniors that are average."

"You've got to get 'em. And everybody's trying to get those guys. ... But the scholarship limitation makes that, because you're only gonna get three or four of those guys, and you want all three or four of 'em to be Tommie Harrises, don't you? Alabama gets the top three or four Tommie Harrises."

The following day, during an interview with James Hale on Sportstalk 1400, former All-American linebacker Brian Bosworth was also very open in his criticisms of the program and what he saw Saturday night.

Now it's one thing for those within the Switzer Center to be dismissive of the criticism from uneducated masses, you know we the fans who can't possibly ever know what we're talking about. It's another thing entirely to hear this kind of talk from guys like Switzer and Bosworth who are both close to the program and have just a little bit of experience to know what they're talking about.

So what say you, Sooner Nation? Do you agree with these two former Sooners?